Tanabe Hajime 1885 – 1962
Tanabe Hajime was a Japanese philosopher of the Kyoto School and the principal successor of Nishida Kitaro at Kyoto Imperial University. After early studies in philosophy of mathematics and physics he engaged the phenomenological and dialectical traditions of European philosophy, developing his original logic of species as a mediating term between the universal and the individual. After the Second World War he produced Philosophy as Metanoetics, a sustained reflection on the philosophical significance of repentance, in which he confronted his own complicity in wartime philosophical nationalism.
Key facts
- Nationality
- Japanese
- Era
- Contemporary
- Movements
- Buddhism
Selected quotes
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Attributed to Tanabe Hajime:
“Philosophy as metanoetics is the philosophy of repentance.”
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Attributed to Tanabe Hajime:
“I had to die in order to live.”
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Attributed to Tanabe Hajime:
“The species mediates between the individual and the universal.”
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Attributed to Tanabe Hajime:
“Philosophy must begin with the limits of philosophy itself.”
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Attributed to Tanabe Hajime:
“Faith is reason's other-power.”